Big problems installing Logic 8 over Garageband 11

I have been working in Garageband 11 6.0.4. I'm not that skilled, but could make decent recordings fairly easily. So I thought - step up to Logic 8 Express. I installed it and what a nightmare.
a) It over-wrote all my garageband .band files as Logic files. Nothing left in .band. So can't use Garageband with my existing projects. What can I do with this?
b) I can't configure the inputs and outputs to work. I have MIDI into my Mac Mini from a Roland kb, and the output should go to my USB DAC. Instead it's going back to the keyboard in Midi. What do I do????????
c) The program is HUGELY harder to understand and I can't find any decent tutorial that takes you properly through the essential setting-up steps. Tutors clearly can't empathise with beginners and mainly seem to want to show off their knowledge.

I posted for some help on the Apple support forum, but waiting for a response is worse than watching paint dry. I've always got good responses here and I wonder if anyone can help me! I can't do any songwriting - grrrr.

a) It over-wrote all my garageband .band files as Logic files. Nothing left in .band. So can't use Garageband with my existing projects. What can I do with this?

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Firstly, if something gets deleted, you can always recover it from your backup, can't you?
By default, Logic 8 Express saves its files into ~/Music/Logic. Garageband files get saved to ~/Music/Garageband.
A Logic file has a completely different file extension, so it should not overwrite a GB file. Can you explain more about exactly what has happened?

b) I can't configure the inputs and outputs to work. I have MIDI into my Mac Mini from a Roland kb, and the output should go to my USB DAC. Instead it's going back to the keyboard in Midi. What do I do????????

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The Audio input/output is set in Preferences > Audio. MIDI devices should be found automatically form anything in Audio/MIDI Setup, in the Utilities folder.

c) The program is HUGELY harder to understand and I can't find any decent tutorial that takes you properly through the essential setting-up steps. Tutors clearly can't empathise with beginners and mainly seem to want to show off their knowledge.

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Any professional-level program is going to take time and resources to learn. I would recommend buying a book, such as the Apple Pro Training Series for Logic 8. I have it, and it was invaluable in learning how to use the app.

c) The program is HUGELY harder to understand and I can't find any decent tutorial that takes you properly through the essential setting-up steps.[/QUOTE]

this is your real problem. The other two would be solved if you understood more about Logic and Macs in general. My advice is to go to the website I linked below and buy a subscription (Yes, pay some $$ and don't just watch youtube) First watch the entire "how to use the Mac" series then the "intro to logic" and later the more advanced logic videos. It will take WEEKS, not hours to learn the basics and months or years to be really good it it. This is profesional level stuff, don't expect to get fully, 100% up to that level in a day or two. It is like learning to play the Saxophone, you are not going to be a really good Sax player by just watching a few minutes on youtube.

This place is recommended, buy a subscription and dedicate some serioues number of hours per weeks to it.http://www.macprovideo.com/tutorials/logic+studio-suite
But do the Mac OS X videos first. Figure an hours a day, four sessions a week and you will be the expert soon enough.

About those lost files, pull them off one of your backups.
If you don't have backups now you know why you need them. In fact you need MULTIPLE backups. Every file you care about needs to be on three different physical media and at two different geographical locations (off site backups) What I would do is set up Time Machine and then in addition make copies to a pair of external drives that you rotate to some other off site location. The is the minimum backup plan for audio recordings. Buy some fire safes for the external drives. One safe at each location.

I can see that you guys are having difficulty in believing that Logic 8 over-wrote ALL my Garageband files. They were in a folder called Garageband. Logic inserted a sub-folder called Logic within this and then proceeded to change all the formats of the files to Logic ones.

It ALSO did this on my second external HD, which is my backup. In other words where it saw a Garageband folder anywhere it modified it. It did this without informing me and giving me a choice.

AFAIK, Logic Express was discontinued some time ago. Maybe there is something strange about it? I upgraded from GarageBand to Logic 9 (from the app store) a year ago and it didn't change anything with my GarageBand files. They are all still there with a .band extension.

AFAIK, Logic Express was discontinued some time ago. Maybe there is something strange about it?

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Nothing strange: Logic Express is a cut-down version of Logic Pro, lacking some of the sample libraries, utilities and features.

When Apple released Logic 9, they sold the complete "Pro" version at the "Express" price, as it was only available as a download. They just didn't bother making a reduced spec version as they had already massively discounted the price.

If it is really doing what the OP says, then I would call it "strange".

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Yes, but it wasn't discontinued because of anything strange, which was your point.

If it did what the OP claims, yes, that would be strange. But seeing as there is no Google evidence of it happening elsewhere, and I can't see any facility for globally changing GB files within LE 8, which I own: then we can only presume that something else must be going on.

There's no way that installing the app or running the update would have converted files from one format to another -- at least not without a big "Do you want to convert all Garageband files to Logic files?" dialog. But even that I find unlikely.

You've tried searching for your GB files in Spotlight? And you're sure that Logic created a folder inside ~/Music/Garageband, not inside ~/Music?

The only thing I can suggest is for you to find someone locally who knows Macs and who can sit down in front of your computer and look at what has happened.

This is such an odd thing, that we're not going to get anywhere by remotely discussing it, in the dark.

For the record: use Time Machine. An App would not have permission to alter the backup.

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